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Water – a limited resource

This week we watched the movie “Last call at the oasis”. The documentary features the water contamination problem in both the States and Australia. A lot of places here tapped water is so intoxicated that people get sick from drinking, showering and bathing in the water There’s reason to believe the situation is the same in several other countries as well.

One might think water is one of the sources we have the most off, if not the most. Sadly, the fact is that the water that’s clean enough to drink it, “drinking water”, is only 1% of all the water. We drink, shower and bathe in it and we’re wasting an enormous amount of perfectly good water down the drain. That is not a problem within itself; the problem is how the water is handled after it’s been used.

Some places the water just goes to the ground, called a septic system. Here the water with goes downhill until it reaches surface water. Other places, and most adopted is the regular sewage system. One would think the water coming out of these systems is clear and free of “stuff”. Again, sadly, that’s not the truth. A lot of the water coming out contains dangerous chemicals. People just draining chemicals down their toilette.

The problem doesn’t stop there, it seems that officials are just pushing things & situations under the carpet. They are not taking this serious enough, people are dying and children are born with diseases. If not acted upon this will just spread and the already dangerous situations will become even more dangerous.

There’s one place in the world that has it all figured out, that is Singapore. The water people have access to is affordable, efficient, universal and lastly but certainly not least of high quality. They reuse their sewage water, which is not happening in the State nor in Australia at the moment, at least it’s not widely adopted. The reclaimed water in Singapore is cleverly branded NEWater, and is just reused water. Yes, that is water coming from your toilette!

The task ahead is a big one, for many countries. As with the movie Invictus, we have to come together as one and we cannot fight each battle by ourselves. Follow the example of Singapore and hopefully make our lives better and the lives of our next.

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10 thoughts on “Water – a limited resource”

I agree, what they are doing in Singapore seems like a very good idea. It was actually a very depressing documentary, hopefully there are some solutions to the problem. Everyone should think about how much water they use everyday! By the way, weren’t you supposed to supply some numbers here?

This was really really interesting, and that’s totally true. I think that they should start taking more action to help if they want their people to get better. That’s really sad. But we watched Invictus, too so that’s cool too. (: